Rob D.
Yelp
As a fan of any addition to our Edna Valley wine scene, my lovely wife, along with our venerable dog Charlie, we're excited to visit this "Instagram-worthy" new spot. While the dog and I aren't the hugest Rose fans, we always enjoy a good dog-friendly wine tasting experience and merrily trudged behind my wife Audrey as she led us to the airstream that serves as their tasting bar.
To the review:
Though my wife is in sales, she impressed me with an initial observation that their staffing layout is "highly inefficient". Now, you may say "the tasting experience shouldn't be rushed, so who cares about efficiency". However, if you are saying this, you would unfortunately be wrong. Why? Good question. So, there were four servers all packed into one side of the Airstream. However, because they were all packed into about a 4 square foot area, with limited taps, it was basically one guy serving and the others kind of "looking cool". While, the others certainly did "look cool", we wished the guy serving would have been cooler. He was certainly a man of few words. When my wife asked if they used stainless barrels for their Grenache Noir he said "no". No further explanation, just a simple "no". When she asked if the winery was associated with Chamisel, he replied "yes" and added "and many more". This, as it turns out, was the longest sentence he used in our wine tasting experience.
Onto the tastings. First off, the price of $20 dollars for 4 tastes is a bit steep for the area...and for quality of wine we tasted. The Rose was drinkable and friendly, not overly sweet, but without much complexity. Perfect for a hot summer day with a group of friends that don't know much about wine but enjoy drinking pink colored drinks. Moving down the menu was a middling white (definitely not worthy of a $30 price tag). No more should, or will, be said about this wine. The 3rd taste was of a Mouvedre that was not sold by the bottle. This, was in fact, very good. Subtle, nuanced, complexity, a bit of cola, with almost a musty finish, I found this quite enjoyable and was disappointed we could not purchase a bottle. Last taste was a Grenache Noir that reminded me of my 3rd girlfriend, easy going at first, friendly, good-looking, but when given much time to explore, unremarkable and certainly not "the one". Like my ex girlfriend, also a bit too expensive.
So......all in all, this is an experience we were happy to have, but something we will most likely only go back to if forced by friends. I will say if our dog Charlie had a yelp account, he would give Malene 4 stars as he enjoyed their flamingos and found several interesting smells in their bushes.